Thursday, July 12, 2007

New Chemicals Showing Up Everywhere

"Pesticides and fragrances are accumulating in people and Arctic land animals, part of a class of thousands of chemicals that need to be assessed for the potential to collect in the food chain, a study said.

Risk assessments currently look for chemical accumulations in fish. That misses substances that people and land animals retain and fish remove by breathing in water, according to a study by researchers at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

About one-third of the 12,000 organic chemicals in production fall into this category, constituting a previously unidentified class of potentially bio-accumulative substances, according to the journal Science, where the paper will be published tomorrow. New regulatory assessments are needed to prevent harm to the ecosystem and humans, the study said."


Read the article